Families shocked by repainted Oct. 7 shelters; official said to call complaints ‘petty’
Survivors, relatives appalled by government-owned firm’s unilateral erasure of the silent testimony of charred walls inside roadside bomb shelters where dozens were murdered by Hamas
A government-owned corporation didn’t consult bereaved families, survivors or conservation authorities before deciding to paint over the interior of roadside bomb shelters near the Gaza border where dozens of people were murdered by Hamas terrorists on October 7, a report said Sunday, in an apparent disregard for the feelings of victims’ relatives.
The concrete structures, meant to protect primarily against rocket attacks from the Strip, became death traps as invading Hamas gunmen, many from the elite Nukhba force, threw grenades at those who were hiding inside.
Since then, some families have been visiting the shelters as the last place their loved ones were alive or free, and some have been seeking to preserve the sites as a memorial for the victims and as evidence of the atrocities committed there, Channel 13 news reported.
Sevral of these families and survivors were shocked to find that the interior of some shelters have been painted over in plain white by Netivei Israel – National Transport Infrastructure Company, without consulting them.
The corporation also didn’t notify the Tekuma Authority, the government body formed to rehabilitate the ravaged Gaza border communities, and didn’t check to see if it wanted to preserve some of the shelters in their original charred form as memorial sites.
When confronted by a reporter for Channel 13 news whose sister was murdered while seeking shelter in one of the structures on that horrific Saturday, a senior official in Netivei Israel reportedly replied that the bereaved families were being “petty.”
“What do they now expect? For us to bring 40 more Nukhba terrorists to throw grenades there?” the unnamed senior official was quoted by journalist Hen Zender as telling her on the phone.
Zender, who lost her sister Noa as she hid in a shelter on October 7, choked up on air multiple times during her television report Sunday evening.
הזיכרון שנמחק מ"מיגוניות המוות": המיגוניות בכביש 232 הפכו לעדות לטבח הנורא שבוצע בהן, אך בעקבות החלטה אטומה – הראיות האלה פשוט נצבעו בלבן – ונעלמו לחלוטיןhttps://t.co/7swG9N5FJE@hen_zender pic.twitter.com/WL2e64tU8l
— חדשות 13 (@newsisrael13) January 14, 2024
“All we want is not to feel invisible,” she wrote on X. “Respect the murdered and the survivors and don’t make decisions that erase the difficult testimonies of the horrors that happened here and of the hell we have been going through for 100 days.”
In its official comment on the report, Netivei Israel said: “The company made use of the truce [in late November] while hostages were being returned to the country, and worked to restore the Western Negev roads, including washing and painting some of the roadside shelters. Additionally, as part of the Transportation Ministry’s plan to rehabilitate the Gaza Envelope, Netivei Israel will erect a memorial cairn to the victims in the area of the shelters.”
Thousands of Hamas-led terrorists invaded southern Israel from Gaza on October 7, rampaging through communities and murdering about 1,200 people, mostly civilians, amid horrific acts of brutality. Over 240 were kidnapped to the Strip as hostages. The attack sparked a relentless Israeli military campaign aimed at rooting out Hamas from Gaza to prevent the potential for a repeat of the devastating attack.